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Font Awesome replaces 'male' and 'female' with 'person' in version 6

8 points by nikolqy ↗ HN
Font awesome gets extremely political and decides that male and female no longer exist. What do you think? Is this the right direction for them? It's even weirder for them considering that they're in Bentonville, Arkansas.

14 comments

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rlv-dan
By being inclusive they are effectively excluding the large majority that is actually identifying themselves as male or female.
nikolqy
Exactly. They'll make documentaries about this someday.
michaelmrose
If a documentary of our life and times is made it will be of enduring tragedy, hope, and with luck eventual progress in the face of many crisis of substantial nature. It wont be about trivialities like this any more than it will be about how I stubbed my toe this morning or how you got stuck in traffic.

If we need anything at this moment it is perspective.

michaelmrose
Why can't they just use person and person-dress which are alike in design to the prior icons?
raxxorrax
Once people did not want to be restricted by their gender. Today it is some form of cult that doesn't allow any dissent. A fate of many with once noble goals if they turn to point their fingers at others.
themodelplumber
They aren't exactly cresting some novel wave of gender policy thinking here. It's more like their direction is moving into alignment with the pack, no?
nikolqy
That's exactly what I was going to say. I think they're just following the pack too, but it seems like a genuinely dangerous move, especially considering how big Font Awesome is.
steelstraw
And notably a small, highly vocal pack on Twitter. Not representative of the US, let alone Planet Earth.
the_only_law
Don’t particularly care enough for it to incite much of a feeling in me, though I suppose what my phone does is a better option: provide a gender neutral option alongside male and female.
michaelmrose
Essentially person is both gender neutral and alike the old male icon as it just looks like a person with what I imagine are pants (hopefully anyway). If you want something explicitly feminine there is person-dress which looks like the old female icon.
michaelmrose
It looks look there is person and person-dress which looks identical to icons labeled male and female. This is even more in keeping with the naming scheme of other items like person-dolly etc etc etc.

Only someone that is carefully reading your code could possibly know the difference so this doesn't much impose upon you the developer nor the end user. You may opt to use the relevant graphics or your own as you please.

It is also somewhat a non sequitur to mention they have some legal attachment to Bentonville. A business which can hire and do business globally need not reflect local mores or attitudes because they aren't limited to the personal expressions that attracts local talent and business.

jfengel
I believe the submitter was expecting their support in a culture war because of their geographic location, and is surprised that they're not.
michaelmrose
Maybe they are smart enough not to perceive it to be a matter of major import. I don't blow my nose at the dinner table at a restaurant not because I'm on the correct side of an ideological conflict but out of simple manners.
jfengel
Only because nose-blowing has not yet become an ideological conflict. It may seem unlikely, but lots of other unlikely things have become ideological lately, so it may be only a matter of time.

I appreciate that you will likely not become a dining-nose-blower. But you may yet find yourself across the table from one.